er as anything unexpected or remarkable, her
brief communication with the "Brazen City." On the contrary it seemed
quite a natural happening. Of course it had always been there, she said
to herself,--only people were too dull and unenterprising to discover
it,--besides, if they had ever found it (certain travellers having
declared they had seen it in the distance) they would not have been
allowed to approach it. This fact was the one point that chiefly dwelt
in her mind--a secret of science which she puzzled her brain to fathom.
What could be the unseen force that guarded the city?--girding it round
with an unbreakable band from all exterior attack? A million bombs
could not penetrate it,--so had said the Voice travelling to her ears
on the mysterious Sound Ray. She thought of Shakespeare's lines on
England--

"This precious stone set in the silver sea
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house
Against the envy of less happy lands."

Modern science had made the sea useless as a "wall" or "moat defensive"
against attacks from the air,--but if there existed an atmospheric or
"etheric" force which could be utilised and brought to such pressure as
to encircle a city or a country with a protective ring that should
resist all effort to break it, how great a security would be assured
"against the envy of less happy lands"! Here was a problem for
study,--study of the intricate character which she loved--and she
became absorbed in what she called "thinking for results," a form of
introspection which she knew, from experience, sometimes let in
unexpected light on the creative cells of the brain and impelled them
to the evolving of hitherto untried suggestions. She sat quietly with a
book before her, not reading, but bent on seeking ways and means for
the safety and protection of nations,--as bent as Roger Seaton was on a
force for their destruction. So the hours passed swiftly, and no
interruption or untoward obstacle hindered the progress of the "White
Eagle" as it careered through the halcyon blue of the calmest,
loveliest sky that ever made perfect weather, till late afternoon when
it began to glide almost insensibly downward towards earth. Then she
roused herself from her long abstraction and looked through the window
of her cabin, watching what seemed to be the gradual rising of the land
towards the air-ship, showing in little green and brown patches like
the squares of a chess-boar